Athletic training often requires an athlete to perform repetitive tasks directed towards mastering a movement, increasing skill, and improving performance. In sports that use a ball at least some of the repetitive tasks include striking the ball with a part of the body such as a foot or a piece of equipment such as a bat or a hockey stick. Traditionally this type of practice requires the use of multiple balls in succession otherwise the training becomes inefficient as each time a ball is struck it must be recovered before it can be struck again.
To solve this problem many different solutions have been utilized such as nets to capture balls that have been kicked, hit, or otherwise struck to prevent them from traveling too far from the user. Though an improvement it is still necessary for the user to collect and reset the ball in place before the ball can be struck again. Another solution has been the use of practice balls that are designed to limit their flight through the air after being struck. A drawback of these types of practice balls is that they commonly do not completely simulate the effects of striking a normal ball and as a result provide limited feedback. Yet another solution has been to attach a tether to a normal ball so that ball flight can be limited to the distance of the tether. Although more effective than using a practice ball, a drawback of using a tether with a ball such as a soccer ball is that the ball must still be recovered and placed back into a position so that it may be kicked again. This increases the time between each kick, which decreases the efficiency of the device. Other systems utilize a tether and attempt to automatically reset the ball back into its original position before being kicked or struck. These systems provide somewhat more efficiency but still suffer from drawbacks. For example, in this type of system the ball is returned to its originating location as a result of gravity. The user may still have to wait before striking the ball again due to excessive oscillation of the ball.